Our resident, “actual proper writer” Colin H (sorry Colin, so idea how to actually tag you on this site) is a big contributor to this fine podcast about Bert Jansch’s first album. As is proper, given he’s Bert’s biographer.

Oh this is good! The wonderful Spriritualized are back and on a Muscle Shoals trip. It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to picture Aretha Franklin covering this thing and it bodes really well for the album. The other song on Spotify, Perfect Miracle, is not unlike the song Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space which, again, is no bad thing.

This evening I dug out a compilation I bought in the 90s called “Music For Modern Living.” It’s actually not bad, Pizzicato 5 are on it, as is Jimi Tenor, Nicolette, Kruder and Dorfmeister. But this track is the doozy. Shatter by Anoesis. What by who? Well, obviously I couldn’t remember it either, but basically it sounds link Roni Size Reprazent.

I am old enough to remember when Drum and Bass was the music of the future and when jazzy Drum and Bass was both even more futuristic as well as the home friendly option. Frankly now, it just sounds like 1996. So I quote fancy doing a playlist here of “Music which just sounds like it’s era.” If you have anything more of it’s time than jazzy Drum and bass, let’s be hearing it…

What is your favorite song from a film, or song brilliantly used in a film?

I have so many and if this thread takes off I’ll post a few. But I’ll start with Curtis Mayfield. Obviously Superfly is his career highpoint; few soundtrack composers get to undermine the entire film they are soundtracking (low budget has a certain freedom). But this song, No Thing On Me (Cocaine On Me) doesn’t get the attention it deserves. It’s a glorious piece of joy.

So folks, film soundtracks or moments from films brilliantly soundtracked by the perfect song. Let me know…

Sad news, if not unexpected news. Whether you liked The Fall or not, you can’t deny that Smith was a singular talent and a genuine one off. The planet will be a duller place without him. RIP you mad old bastard.

It’s night time in the big city. A solitary man gazes at a non solitary woman. It’s theme time afterword hour with your host ganglesprocket.

Hello friends, it’s theme time afterword hour; dreams, themes and schemes and this evening, January 2nd is, in Scotland still a bank holiday. Basically in Scotland folks are often still drunk from the 31st December. Here in England, where I now reside, many folks have returned to work. Many of these hard working people are likely hardly working this day. Who can? The weather is shit, we are broke, pay day is a long time away.

Musicians are noted work avoiders and yet plenty of them sing about work a lot. Willard Grant Conspiracy do a fine job here. And friends, if you have any other finest worksongs you care to contribute? Please do so. A spotify playlist will follow…

For those of you shamefully unaware of this piece of absolute genius, this is a cartoon aimed at under fives on Cbeebies. Duggee is a dog and sort of scout leader, the squirrels are the young kids who earn badges at his club. It is beyond sweet and wonderful and is, in my opinion, up there with The Wire and The Sopranos. I admit that it could be that having two children under five has affected my taste here.

However today’s episode “The Stick Badge” absolutely outdid itself; the squirrels had to build a camp fire, they needed sticks, they found a stick who sung. The song sounded EXACTLY like the happy hardcore which blighted Scotland’s post industrial hell holes in the early 90s. Except it had charm.

Many acts “went disco” in the late seventies and early eighties and not all of them were wretched. Some of them were genuinely good.

I have a real soft spot for Here Comes The Night, the Beach Boys 11 minute disco monster from their album LA mainly because I’d never have thought that the Beach Boys could successfully go disco at all…

One of the quiet joys of music is when you find the source of a sample, and I have just stumbled across this one. Getting Nasty by Ike Turner, as used in Concrete Schoolyard by Jurassic 5. This has made me extremely happy indeed.

Has anyone here ever read a book about a classical composer and liked it? The problem I have is simple, I am not a musician so when things get a bit musicological I have no idea what they are on about. Classical books do this way more than pop ones do…

So genuinely folks, any books about Bach or Beethoven in particular which wouldn’t bewilder a non musician? Let me know…

It’s night time in the big city. A solitary man rocks a crying baby. It’s Theme Time Afterword Hour with your host ganglesprocket

Welcome friends. I have spent a day solo parenting and so my thoughts turn to death and the nothingness to which we are galloping, with grim inevitability.

Given that my teething child has been somewhat demanding and her brother is learning all kinds of terrible behaviours at nursery, I personally think this song sums up my feelings about death at the moment. Any other offers gratefully accepted….

I wish I thought of this phrase, but sadly, I am not that witty and clever.

I have just read Jonathan Meades review of Slow Burn City by Rowan Moore, and I feel the entire section deserves to be posted here. He’s talking about the “Garden Bridge” which, thankfully, has been jettisoned…

“Boris Johnson, a provenly mendacious mayor; Joanna Lumley, a gurning veteran dolly bird; Thomas Heatherwick, a cute salesman for himself with an abject record of design failures, astonishingly compared by the dotard shopkeeper Terence Conran to Leonardo da Vinci: these three ‘national treasures’ should take note of Moore’s startling description of the bridge as ‘digital jism’, a useful addition to the architectural lexicon. They are of course not alone in their antinomian arrogance. One longs for a National Treasure Island, to which the professionally characterful and the strenuously lovable might be transported, there to anecdote each other to tears and expire in a storm of names dropped from a great height.”

I was listening to an episode of Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan the other day and I don’t think we’ve done that here yet.

So let’s do one now. I have decided let’s start with Gardens. Mainly because this tune came up on my Spotify Discovery and I have been playing it to death ever since. And I did not think that Einstürzende Neubauten would ever be my cup of tea.

I know that we are all grown ups here who realise that “guilty pleasures” is an oxymoron. If it’s a pleasure, why be guilty? But what if this pleasure is actually, unapologetically shite?

I started wondering about this tonight whilst watching BBC 4’s psychedelic night. Which features rather a lot of Incredible String Band

I love The Incredible String Band. But they are AWFUL really. I know this because putting them on for a second sends my wife out of the room swearing. She’s a kind tolerant woman, but the Incredible String Band makes her want to kick puppies.

So I feel guilty. I play the Incredible String Band, puppies get actually kicked by my wife.

My favorite Pink Floyd song is Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. It’s neither a Syd Barratt tune or one from one of their huge albums, but I love it to bits. It’s just so enigmatic and mysterious, I play it to death.

There has never been a more “afterword” book than this ever in the entire history of humanity.

The unnamed narrator and his friend James form a club called “The Forensic Records Society” which meets in their local pub on a Monday. The idea is for every member to bring three singles which they listen to forensically. No commenting or reviewing allowed, you just listen. James, however is a bit of a tyrant and his no nonsense enforcements of the rules leads to rival societies being formed; the “Confessional Records Society” on a Tuesday and the “Perceptive Record Society” on a Wednesday.

The books starts off has a sort of tribute to High Fidelity; an amusing riff on the behaviour of blokes. It kind of becomes a parable about political schism. Yes I did think it was about the Bolshevik / Menshevik split, but it’s always amusing; think Animal Farm but jokey.

What it gets right is the behaviour of men. Men who know too much about music. There’s a really neat bone chucked to these men as well, who are mocked throughout the book. Only song titles are mentioned, the artists are not. You can » Continue Reading.

That splendid old chap Rick Wakeman was on Desert Island Discs this week. As ever, he is extremely pleasant company and I suspect Kirsty Young was quite taken by the old rogue. Well worth a listen, and even if you don’t like his music (which I don’t).

His record choices are fascinating by the way. Plenty of late fifties, early sixties novelty…